DIY Firestar Halloween costume

For the second year in a row, Alexandra set her mind on being an obscure character for Halloween. Last year it was WordGirl. This year, it's Firestar.

Last year's DIY WordGirl costume

Who is Firestar? I had no idea. Apparently she's a friend of Spiderman from the cartoon Spiderman and his Amazing Friends circa mid-1980s. (Thanks Netflix for introducing my kids to these old 80s cartoons.)

(By the way, who is WordGirl? She's from a PBS Kids TV show that Alex was obsessed with last year.)

Alexandra first saw the cartoon last year, but it was when watching a few episodes again this summer that she set her mind on Firestar for Halloween.

At which point, I sighed.

Because everyone knows that I don't sew and being crafty is not really my thing. Thank goodness for the Internet.

After spending much time Googling FireStar kids costumes, I discovered that there were other parents out there over the years in the same predicament as me -- having a kid who wanted nothing more than to be a little-known superhero for Halloween.

Thank goodness for much craftier moms than me, who lay the how-to ground-work that I simply had to adapt. The hardest part was running around to different stores to find the different pieces.

I started with finding a pink, long-sleeved ballet leotard from a dance store and (roughly) matching pink leggings from a children's clothing store.

Then they were dyed yellow (for the record, Ryan helped with this part) using RIT clothing dye.

The red boots, we just so happened to already have in the dress-up box. So, I cut the bows off of them, cut a flame pattern out of orange felt and used a glue gun to stick it to the sides of the boots. 

The same orange felt flame pattern was cut out for the gloves. The gloves were made up of two parts though. The sleeves are the cut-off pieces of long, red witches gloves I found at the dollar store. They were way to big for her, hence the cut-off part. The fingered gloves are simply little red magic mini gloves, also from the dollar store. 

The mask was a great find. I had planned to make it myself, but while buying the Rit dye, I found these plain white masks at the craft store. Alex painted it red.

The hair? An Ariel princess wig. 

The results? One VERY happy girl.